57: Yes, And... The Psychology of Improv Comedy

Kelly has worked at the Second City for nearly three decades in various creative and leadership positions. He's produced shows with such a notable talent as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert. His latest book is Yes and How Improvisation Reverses no Butt Thinking and Improves creativity and collaboration Lessons from the

Second City. Anne Libra has worked with the Second Stay since nineteen eighty six and served as Executive Artistic Director of the Second City Training Centers and Education Programs for eight years. She's also Director of Comedy Studies at Columbia College Chicago. Her book, The Second City Almanac of Improvisation is published by Northwestern University Press. Hey, guys, Hello, I Scott, how many mistakes I make of that bio? I don't

think you made any mistakes. I must have spent all day practicing that bio and preparing you crafted it well, thank you, thank you. Well. Even if I didn't make a mistake, your point would be that that's okay, right totally. In the improvisation, we talk about seeing all obstacles as gifts and making mistakes work for you. Basically, the idea there is that we have a very odd relationship to failure in our business world and in our culture because

we fail all the time. And improvisation is an incredible art form that acts not only allows for failure, but finds ways to use failure. It quite literally embraces failure. Well I'm loving that. So let's just start at the fundamentals. Yes, and what is that exercise? And maybe we should just like do it right now, like just like illustrate to the audience what it is we are doing it. Oh yay, Yeah,

we succeeded. I mean the idea behind yes and is that you get somewhere faster if whenever someone says something or offers something, you don't just agree that it's true, but you also build on it. So for example, Scott, give me an imaginary superhero, Purple Popsicle Man. Yes, Purple Popsicle Man has a giant purple popsicle with which he destroys his evil villain nemesis, Green ice cream Cone Man. And they all live in a magical world near Mars,

but not on Mars. It's near Mars until one day it rained down on them and they all dissipated and melted away. Wait wait, wait, wait, that wasn't good right, That was like yes ending. Wait can you yes end something negative? Sure? Sure, okay, fo you can also use yes and for evil okay, good good. So that was yes end And I just yes ended with two of the like literally the like inventors, like the geniuses of

yes end. You guys wouldn't say, because you're humble people, But I feel honored to have done that with you guys. Just now, Yeah, I mean the thing about yes And it's a bit of a bumper sticker at this point, because you know, improv now is a little bit more in the mainstream than it used to be. But and the central tenet is still true, which is so much in life and we see this in business, we see

this in education. People lead with no, and they do this for a lot of reasons, mostly because they're working out of fear or they want to control, or both those things are true. And as a sort of pointed out, it's not enough just to say yes. When you yes and you explore and heighten, that's a much more positive,

great place to be. And I talk to a lot of business groups in my gig and there's a lot of resistance from usually some like haughty guy in the back of the auditorium who claims that if he were going to yes and all the time, he'd never get any work done. And you know that guy is just a nightmare, which we just know to be true. But the reality is, when you're in a brainstorm or a meeting, you're not yes ending for like seven hours. You're yes ending for like ten or fifteen minutes, just so everyone

can be heard, so everyone can participate. There is plenty of room for editing and parsing and killing off bad ideas in our work. The difficulty is if you don't yes, and then you kill off the idea before you've had a chance to build it explore it. In a heighten and discover what it could be. You know, And when we do this all the time, right, somebody starts an idea and immediately it's shut down. Well, if you yes and it and take it to the next step, it

may still be a bad idea. You may decide not to do it, but you have discovered what about the idea is really true and taken it to its next natural conclusion. So it's almost like indistincuisable from the creative process. Oh, it is different, that is. I mean, that's exactly what I'll talk you about when I talk about creativity as well. Don't you say, were it improv Yeah? I don't know, well, because I mean it's human behavior, right, this is how

humans behave. And what the founders of Second City and the founders of this pedagogy realized quite intently is that people don't normally well in groups. Wouldn't it be smart to have some rules of the road so that they can more effectively create together, because that's not a natural act. And there's a lot We were just talking to some behavioral scientists this week who sort of claimed that their science shows that the best work gets done by individuals.

And I'm like, now you got to look at that science, because I seem to recall that the Beatles were really good, and I don't think any of those solo albums were as good as you know, the Beatles albums, and oh how about a symphony. Immediately you started like, oh, you have a good point. So I mean, again, we're never in this alone, even if we're, you know, working on something by ourselves. Let's say we're a playwright. The play

doesn't end with a single writer in a room. There was likely an editor, and there was most certainly going to be a director, and there's going to be actors, and there's going to be sets, and there's going to be audiences, and all those things affect the creative success. And so when you can be oriented towards looking at this sort of thing holistically rather than sort of minutely or in an isolated way, you're going to unlock things

that are bigger and better than had you just been alone. Yeah, and in your book you talk a lot about co creation as something that happens through improv and this idea you can't have co creation with one person, that doesn't even make any sense. I think part of what's interesting about that is It's not to say that creating by yourself, it's no, but that co creation is creating something that you wouldn't create on your own right and work together.

The joy of that is that there's something you know, Scott, you're going to create something by yourself. I'm going to create something by myself. But when we work together, we create a third thing that is different. It's you know, it's like the Beatles. It's different from what it would be if either of us did it by ourselves. And I think from a science point of view, those unknown variables are very exciting. I mean that that is the thing you're trying to get at is what do we

not understand about this thing as individuals? And maybe what do we not understand about something collectively? But through collective creative acts we discover all kinds of truths. And we just know this from working at Second City for so long. I mean, I've had Jeff Richmond, who's married to Tina Fey.

He was a director at Second City for many years, and during one sort of ugly process he left me a note on my desk at Knight said that just said, this is the most inefficient way to create art ever and I know what he means. He's not incorrect in

some regards. However, we have nearly sixty years of proof that this way of creating like we do at Second City, which is ensembles of actors working with other, with a director and a musical director and technicians and all that and in front of an audience, in front of an audience, in collaboration and conversation, all with each other, has it is the most successful, continuously successful theater in the history

of theater. We have never closed. I mean this is we do only original work, and we have never closed since nineteen fifty nine, except for a brief time when we had a fire, and that was just a couple of weeks. But that doesn't exist in the world a commercial venture that has never closed, that only does original work. So you know that you've got to look at that data and say that that shows you something. It certainly does. And I love this idea of this, this trade off

between efficiency and trial and error and variability. I like to think of expertise as being characterized by efficiency, but creativity seems to be characterized by variability. I think one of the primary elements is this idea of discovery that expertise often suggests that we know and advance what the outcome is going to be. And you know, I already know what this is. I'm going to explain to you

what it is. I might go find some research that backs up what I already know that I know, and as opposed to in this creative process and particularly in an improvisation process, we talk about the idea of discovery that I don't know what's going to happen. Anything can happen, and what we're going to find is going to be a surprise, We're going to know it, we're going to learn from it in a completely different way. So how does practice, like, how can you practice be good at

improv when it's always different every time? Well, but it's not. But you're not still leading question because I know that you're going to get You're not the reason that you can practice. You practice making discoveries. You don't practice what the discovery is. And I always use the equation to

you know, jazz or basketball. I mean, you know you shoot those free throws over and over and over again, and you do those running exercises with your teammates over and over and over again, so that when you are playing in the game and you are looking to be artful, that you don't have to think about it, that you move to the right space, that you can read each other. So really great improvisers are so steeped in practice. They

don't start that way. I mean, a lot of people start to say to me, why do you think people get into improvisation. I say, it's a lot of really talented people who are too lazy to memorize scripts in anuditional theater. But then when they get into improvisation, they love it so much that side of them that wants to excel, you know, kicks in the gear and suddenly they're extremely unlazy. They are deep in practice in their

craft so that it can appear effortless when they're doing it. Because, honestly, and the reason this relates to everyone is because we improvise every day. We are not handed a script in life. You're not handed a script when you wake up in the morning, usually not at work, certainly not when you're raising your kids, and so improvisation becomes this. My friend Heather Caruso has a way she phrases it, which is we become practice practiced in being unpracticed. So it is

skills building to deal with the unknown. And that can be as simple as what we've talked about with a yes and exercise, and it can be as difficult as building up your resilience in order to thrive from failures, which takes a little while. Right, Yeah, it's not natural to embrace mistakes, right, it's natural to beat ourselves up from us. So the idea that a mistake is an opportunity and not an opportunity for blame, it requires practice.

It requires accepting the mistake and building on it and then realizing that it wasn't a failure, it was an opportunity. So we literally have you know, basic improv games which are about pushing people to make mistakes, to behave mistakingly, which they find very difficult because it's not a natural act, right, And so it's like, nope, do it again, do it again, mistake, mistake, mistake, and then there's exercises to them pivot off of that,

because this is not the way we're wired. We are, as you know very well, we're not wired to create to I heard that from someone, this brilliant author use that phrase. You might know them too. So we have to do a ton of unlearning to get back to that sort of more basic human stuff that will allow us to create in the moment. Hold on, I want to clarify that. So you said we're not why to create, Well,

I think we are. I think we become Our wires get crossed up as we go to things like school, block are blocked, you know, corroded, because we are then given lots of rules and we're told that there's one way to do something, and then we're told that, oh, people who look like us need to behave this way, and those people who look different than you, well they behave differently, and all this junk that, unfortunately, as you

get older, just gets more deeply cemented. So by the time that second City gets hired to go into a corporate workshop with these sort of high functioning forty to fifty year old salesmen, they are just sort of riddled with anxiety over the idea that maybe there's a different

way to behave that might have success for them. And then when they experience it, because our learning is highly experiential, when they experience it, it it is utterly transforming because they just know they're like, you're right, I don't listen or that's right, I don't listen. Well, my wife is right, Yeah right, my wife is right. You hear that all the time. You hear that all the time, like, oh, thank god, actually this is what you hear. Thank god,

my wife isn't here. Yeah, yeah, Well this is really profound because you know, the brain wants to wire itself early in development in a fashion that makes us exploratory. And so we're actually going against the grain by taking that out of us, you know, so we have to kind of it's really a shame. It's kind of a tragedy how our especially education system kind of crushes that. Yeah, well,

isn't it interesting? I mean, one, I think one of the things about the improvisational exercises is that what they're really designed to do is recreate recognizable human behavior, so natural behaviors, and it's that we get away from practicing the things that are natural to us. And that what a lot of these improvisational exercises do is they literally let us go back and practice the thing that was natural to us as a behavior as a child, or

but with more control than a child. Shall we say, so, this might be the apt moment to mention that all of this stuff comes out of children's games. Yeah, right, becausely like the fifties, right, even earlier earlier in twenties, Nevi Boyd worked in the Hull House movement and she brought on a young woman named by the name Viola Spolan, who is the mother of Paul Sills, who founded the

Second City. And Viola created many of these improvisational games which are still played today, that she used when she was dealing with immigrant children and she was trying to find ways to better assimilate them. So many of the games are in gibberish or they're silent because these kids didn't all share language. But what they all do is get groups of people together to interact positively. That they

enhance empathy, They concentrate on being others focused. They involve listening skills, so it's not I mean, you know, just listening to that. You know, everyone can look at that and go oh wait a sec of course, that's what human beings need, because we don't do those things naturally as we get older and it gets drummed out of us.

But there's other sort of realities for why we don't because we don't have as many places to play as we get older, and that becomes just such an important part of the human condition that you know, if you are in a place of not playing well, and I'll say, they're not playing with other people. You know, we get to play with the machine. And again there's room for all of that. And that's play, right, and that's also improvising,

and that's true and that's real. And I think one of the things this certainly happens in school, and I imagine that's what leads it to the business world. But there is so little truth telling in corporate America that it has clogged up all the creative channels. And when we look at the companies that are innovative, the Virgin air Lines or the Southwest Airlines or you know, what

have you, they are playful, they are funny, they are improvised. Well, you know what's interesting is is I think this is a theory that rather than a thing, but that you know, the enemy to play is the need to control. The minute we start to worry about control, we start to

worry about what's going to happen. And you see it when a business scales itself right, it goes from something group on would maybe be a perfect example of a business that started really playful, not just comedy, but just a level of play, and then as they got bigger, they're like, oh, nope, we have to be careful in case it gets out of control. And then at that moment we start to stifle all the things, all the play, all the things that actually allowed us to get creative

in the first place. So do you find that lay can help people who suffer from like generalized anxiety disorder or OCD or like a lot of control issues. Well, well, yeah, indeed, what's interesting is that, But what it lets them do

is play. Specifically, the games that we use in improvisation allow you to play in a way that is safe, So you can take risks within a very simple, safe construct and recognize that the thing that you're afraid of, that you're trying to control, you're trying to create control to stop it from happening, is actually not a big

deal at all. And one of our friends who was on the Second City main stage for many years and now a writer at a Serent Live, she suffers from significant, significant social anxiety disorder, and in conversation with her, I mean, I was struck because my first reaction when I was talking to her about this, was like, why would you ever become an actor, you know, in front of all these people? And even more so, why would you become an improvisational actor who's getting on stage with no script?

And she said what I needed to understand was that when she was improvising, that was the one place she didn't feel anxious because she not worry or think about what came before. She could not worry or think about what came after. She had to stay mindy in the present. And the person who was apart from her, her seene partner across from her, was their sole job was to save her. So the ensemble's job, and that the job

of every ensemble is to save everyone else. And that's that safe place, right, the idea that in the room is there. You know. I often talk about ensemble as a practice, that your job as a member of the ensemble is to take care of everyone else in the ensemble. It's not necessarily a specific group of special people who

have a special relationship like the Beatles. It's really you and I when we'd come into interaction with each other ensemble, and that my job as an improviser with you is to make sure that your mistakes are validated and I'm taking care of use. There's no no need to fear because my job is to have you back. Well, if only everyone in society got that the importance of treating the world as improv yes, yes, then the world would

be a safe space. Well yeah, or safer so yeah, Well, how does authenticity relate to improv You know, that's such a tricky word. I mean, I think on a content level. When Anne talked about improvisation as a way to find recognizable human behavior that would be authentic. So the minute some company hires an advertising company to make them more authentic and they're brand more authentic, that is the most

inauthentic act you could ever do will not succeed. But there's a state of being authentic is not always attractive, and it's riddled yourself. I believe that even the most attractive among us have moments when they wake up in the morning that you know, so so authenticity, which is I think one of the reasons Second Cities have been so successful is because people recognize that they look at and go, oh my god, this is what everyone's laughing

about when they come to a Second City show. Is shared recognition of something that's true that's just been said that normally people don't say, or shining a light in an area that we all know to be true that we don't get to see that often. So, you know, when we're teaching at the training center in the beginning classes, we don't teach comedy. Now, we just teach people to be honestly in the moment with whatever is going on.

And what's interesting about that is the minute that you do that, the minute that you create recognizable human behavior, you play these games and you create interactions in the way that humans are. It's funny because it includes it is because it's authentic, right, because it includes failure, which is also part of that authenticity. And that's also what comedy is. Comedy is the connective place between truth, recognition, mean, you know, failure, and a safe space in which to

acknowledge those things. I'm trying to visualize the ven diagram right now. All those things you just said, well you put them all on top and that's you know, every comedy is those things is right in the middle of that, in the middle of the n the middle so close to tragedy close. Well, it's not it is tragedy if it's not safe, right, so you remove the safe space and it's just truth and pain, then it's tragedy or pay those Well, what's the mel Brooks quote? Like if

I cut my finger? Okay, tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a hole and die, right yeah, So okay. This idea of authenticity as revealing your vulnerable side seems to be something that we don't promote in society as much as we probably should,

and that you can do with improv. I'm just thinking of like all these different ways of being authentic, Like, isn't it possible because there's so many sides of ourselves, right, there's so many ways of being and for instance, someone with social anxiety doesn't want to be defined as a person with social anxiety might be able to use improv as a way to authentically be more playful. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Well it was funny. So Anne and I were talking the other day and it is a conversation that's got we've had before when we've talked about stand up comedians and improvisers, and as any self respecting stand up comedian will tell you, the bulk of them are miserable human beings, and improvised is not at all, which is fascinating. She's also an improviser. She's also an improviser our friend Aisha, but again, and improvisers tend to be happier and more

well justed, not all of them. I'm laughing as I'm thinking about this, because I know so many. However, one of the things that answer reminded me of was, well, it's not that the comedians don't see the power in us. Well, no, I'd go the other way. I think that this is true for both comedy and for improv is. It's not that that comedy or improv makes comedians unhappy, because lots of communities are unhappy. It's that comedy and improvisation is

a balm to people who are unhappy. It's a bombs so that it makes you feel that comedy is a way of dealing with your anxiety and dealing with depression and dealing with negative things in your life, and that improvisation does give you that opportunity. And you have alcohol in there, and you have the Holy Trinity. Yeah, because the prefailt the cortex will get a reduced activation. It's not too much alcohol. Well, that's the problem, isn't it. Yeah, that's it really is. So this idea of pain and

being done a comedy, you know it. Also, I find this very interesting because I'm in the middle of an eight week mindfulness stress reduction course right now, Yes, and I am finding it is reducing my levels of anxiety and it's helping me stay in the moment more. Do you find a lot of good improvisers also do mindfulness

practice on the side, Well, some do. But it's interesting because I think actually that because improvisation is on its own a mindfulness practice, even if it's not labeled that way. What's interesting about it is it's mindfulness that does not require that you sit by yourself in a chair alone. It's mindfulness that you take into the world. And one of the things I think we were talking about before, you know, I have a mindfulness practice. I have a

meditation practice. But when I was doing yoga and meditation, I would often sort of think, well, and now I leave this and I go into the world, and I don't know how to bring this into the world. And what improvisation really is is a set of guidelines that allow you to be mindful, mindful with another human being. I love that. So I wanted just to think about

this's logically for a second. On first blush, it may seem that improv is actually at odds with mindfulness because mindfulness, whenever you have a thought that is mind wandering, it's like most return to the breath. Most return to the breath, danger Will Robinson. I'm mind wandering, danger Will Robinson. Where's an improv? You want to encourage divergent thinking, and you

want to you don't want to ignore it. So maybe so that said on first blush, but when you peer under the cover and you look deeper at what's going on with improv, improv seems to be a unique state where you simultaneously are mindful while you are bringing to the table your inner cell. Yes, so this strikes at the heart of what I think is the important next step in the study of this work, which is it

is a duality. It is doing both things. And whether we're talking about Danny Conneman's work or we're talking about Nick Epley's work, I mean, there are scientists and psychologists and all kinds of brilliant people who are eschewing this idea of your left brain or your right brain, and like, no, your brain and brain is all the those things, and improvisation is a wonderful seesaw between those different aspects of the brain, the idea of where you need to be

free to not self censor, but then you need to be able to shift and rapidly create well. And I also want to say this that so much of mindfulness, isn't it bad? Because you know this, it's not about not thinking, that's right, it's not. But what it is awareness, awareness of what you're thinking. And it's about not getting tied to thought, tied to a thought as being what's actually happening. So it's not like getting lost in the thought,

the same thing as improvisation. I don't want. If I'm improvising with you, my goal is to be in the moment with you and follow what's going on, as opposed to getting personally attached to my idea of what it should be. Yeah, but this is what's interesting is that like it seems like mindfulness trains your mental flexibility, intentional control and flexibility, so that you have that tool to

which you can use for whatever purpose you want. Where it seems like improv it's the means and the end it seems like improv is it means and an end, whereas mindfulness is only a means. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the dangers is to think of improvisation practices as being that thing that five people get up

on stage and do with bright T shirts. Right, that is, those games can be product, they can be an end, but they're designed to train you to be in the moment in a process, but not just be in the moment, in the moment and co create. Make that. Yes, right, So it is we do in the world, right you said, when we're actually in the world. Yeah, that's what's the world right now? Yes, yes, we are suddenly like I confuse,

what where does improv start? And everything else? And for you guys, probably there is no boundary right in your own personal life. You guys are some of the most fun people ever to hang out with. I just want to make that we had a very good time in Philly. Yes, yes, you guys. I love you guys, And I feel like you don't see such these boundaries that probably likes now like, oh well, the improv session's done now we have to go home, you know. Yeah, well we're so we're pretty lucky.

I mean, we're lucky in a variety of ways, you know, and I've been married for twenty years. We kind of grew up together at Second City. We've got two kids. You've co created in the most biblical sense, we literally

co created. I think I did more of that co creation. Yes, involved scene part, but one of the things that is kind of a here's the blessing of Second City because when you start, when you talk, just if we weren't talking about Second City, you would never talk to us, because improvisation is like, you know, it has no commercial aspect other than what Second City has done with it in a few other new theaters. But even those theaters are like five dollars tickets, you know, and none of

the actors get paid. At Second City is an equity theater that charges a decent amount of money come see the shows, that has a you know, corporate division, all these sort of applications. So what Ann and I get to do is work in this incredibly rich, fun and creative art form that is also a thriving commercial business so that we can afford to have a good meal

now and again. But also when I'm sender Sunday College or sun to College, and then but when we get booked to go to you know, lecture or do keynotes or workshops, the expectation isn't that we are going to be drying serious. The expectation is that we are going to be a bit of fun and be ourselves and to your point of authenticity. After I wrote the book and I got booked on the speaker circuit, I wrote the first few keynotes that I had to deliver because

I felt they're paying me a lot of money. It's called a keynote, I should write it down and why really use keynote as use keynote as my presentation? And and those were okay, they were fine, the clients seemed okay.

But I knew it wasn't tapping into the way I knew how to deliver within the experience I'd been given in my time at Second City, and I had Actually I was reading Adam Grant's Originals, where he talks about this need for the mind to procrastinate, especially when you're sort of playing with your ideas of the things you know a lot about, And so I started to do that, and I would just sort of beat out, I think

I'm going to talk about these five things. The minute I started doing that, I was tearing the roof off of the place. It was exactly what sort of people wanted, which was not a negation of whatever scholarly insight or business examples that I have, because I have those at my disposal. But at least it was a there was a convert It was the thing that Anne always says about the work, which is the work is a conversation with the audio and people when they go to these conferences,

no one is conversing with them. Everyone is talking at them. They might ask some questions at the end, but everyone's talking at them, and I converse. I demand it inside the whatever sixty minutes I'm given. Well, that's a very different model of education. You know that you're a passive student and you're just listening to this teacher who knows everything. So I just want to say that's a very good point that should probably be applied to lots of sectors

of society. Also, you talk about how you like in listening to a muscle. You say listening is like a muscle. So is this something that you personally, Kelly, have developed, Like, do you think that prov has helped you a lot with that I see it. By the way, it just like just the worst laughter. I say in every workshop I lead where we talk about this that we collectively

are terrible listeners. Me included. One of the best things for Kelly was writing the book, is staff said, because he would write the book from eight to ten in the morning, and they always knew that the best time to bring something to him was at ten ten because he would be such a good listener. Yeah, I was. But here's the living by improv because I was practicing. I was practicing at least by my words and the actions in the moment. And I think that that tends

to be true. So what I recognize with myself and I do now catch myself in meetings more and more because I mean, like I'm loud, I talk a lot,

and I have a tendency to dominate in meetings. And so I have really tried in recent years, as I'm becoming more and more into trying to be more in tune with the pedagogy, is to catch myself and try to silence myself and to take a back seat and make sure if I see someone who isn't speaking that I like eye contact with them and try to encourage them to talk if I'm leading the meeting, or even if I'm not leading the meeting, to sort of lean back as opposed to lean forward all the very sort

of status things. So like, I'm just as bad as everyone else at this, And there's no it's not like you solve it one day, you know. It's not like you go to the gym and you lift some weights and you're done. You got to keep lifting the weights you can'tnot well indeed, and you know, this is the other thing that really is true about improvisation is that the more you do it, the more you discover the

value of it. So the more you listen, the more you actively listen, the more you listen to somebody all the way to the end of their sentences and really pay attention and respond to what you hear, not to what you're planning to say. And that takes a long that's a lot of time. But the more you do it, the more you realize how valuable it is, and that just reinforces it. And that's really what that sort of improvisational practice makes listening a muscle out of that's so cool.

Can you give me some examples of some people you've consulted for where you've seen like like a real change, so you can like point to say, like when we went to this company, they were all boring, like on affable people. And then yeah, so working with ge don't mention any don't miss but I'm saying, can you think of an example of late No, this is a really fun sort of example and it's a little bit different,

but I think it's cool. Our friend mcknapier, who is a the founder of the Alliance Theater, a long time artist, a consultant the Second City, and he led a lot

of our early corporate classes. And Mick was in this leadership workshop and it was all like twenty major they're all CEOs, and there was one Indian gentleman who had lived in the United States for years, but he talked with a fairly thick accent, and Mick could tell that he was having a little bit of trouble in the beginning sort of moments, and so he made a point of focusing the other people in the class to continually

help him. This one. He found ways of sort of manipulating environment and to encourage ensemble, encourage ensemble on the group and towards the end of the workshop and it started going great. It was going great. They kind of were in a circle talking and this guy was like a heavy hitter, real successful guy. He welled up in his eyes and he basically said, I can't even tell you. I always feel a disadvantage because this isn't my first language,

and I know I speak with this accent. And I looked around and every one of you supported me, and then all these other people like start welling up, and the client, like these hardened businessmen all had this moment of like I wanted to help you because I could see how smart you were and you needed to get these ideas out and it was my job to do that. And I don't want you to feel like you're anything

less than the brilliant person you are. And that is like one of those magic moments where you're like, that's as good as it gets. Like if that you know you have one of those every year, You're fine because you made major breakthroughs, especially with individuals who are in a place of power, who hopefully then can bring that to their business. I was talking to Simon Sinek this week and we had a really interesting conversation around the fact that the problem with so many leaders mostly because

they're not trained to be leaders. Right, So you take someone who's really good at their job, and then you're like, you are so good a job, we're going to make you a leader, which then means you can't do your job anymore, you know, which is a paradox. But really great leaders then know how to shift their mastery to a new place, which is to unlock the leadership and brilliant of others. And the minute that you realize that when you move to that leadership position is no longer

your job to do the job. It is your job to get everyone else to do the job and do it well. That is a place where you can really thrive. And there are certain other people who are good at that, and guess what, they shouldn't be those kinds of leaders. They should just go back to doing their very very good job. Does this relate it all to your idea of principle of improbably follow the follower? Oh yeah, I feel like it's related, right, Yeah, it's one hundred percent.

You know the idea that when you're leading through your own brains, you're not co creating, right you are? Oh, I have an idea I'm going to make this thing happen, and then everybody's job is to follow me. The minute that you do this thing of follow the follower, which is very scary when we do it as an exercise. You know, you have two people doing a mirror exercise of each other, and you say no, one leads, everyone follows, and immediately everyone in the room says, but then nothing

will happen. He said, no, just follow the follower, follow the person that you see what happens if you assume that they're leading. And when that happens, something really magical shows up, which is that something is already happening. We don't have to push it, We don't have to make it happen then, and everyone's involved. It is not the win of this magical leader who is doing it all by themselves. It is the win of the entire group.

And from a management in business context, this is simply the exercise itself is a physical manifestation of Peter Drucker's theories. You know that the hierarchy in business no longer works, and it really never worked. But the idea of flat organizational structures of knowledge workers stuff that was, you know, taking root in the beginning part of the twenty century. That's where it's tied to. So there's a very practical application with regard to productivity and leadership in building future

leaders Absolutely. What do you do though, with people who come into Second City who just have huge egos, like it must be hard for them as an adjustment process, right, Well, I mean yes, yes, yes, but like anywhere, so that that's the thing is when they take the classes, they cannot succeed unless they give up on that ego, right, I mean, they literally will fail the level and not

you know, paradoxical, that's so paradoxical. Yeah, So you need an intense ego to be the person who says I'm going to get up and with no script and be immune using with other people. But you also have to sublimate your need to be right, your need to control things. And there there unlocks the secret of why Second City talent has been so amazing for years. It is exactly that is getting incredibly gifted people in a room and learning the skill of seating control as a way to

enhance the power of the group. And this is this is what what I always tell people is is Second City has one of the most affirming, ensemble oriented processes that you'll ever find in any theatrical art form. And all we do is create individual stars. I love that. I just so you show that that model works. Yes, tell me what doesn't work about it? I mean it worked from Mike Nichols and Elaine May to Keegan Michael Key and Jason Sedeikis and Tina Fey and Steve kra Yeah.

So it might not make them a great stand up median, but it makes them a great improv artist. Well, And I mean what it does is when you think about it's not just that we're producing. People are working in the industry like Second City trained people own late night television in America, right, I mean that's Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, the cast of Saturday Night Live. I mean it is, you know that that is And then down the line, right, these are titans of the industry and they have been

for decades. More and more people are learning the art form and applying it to the industry. That's great. We share that with the improve Oalympics of the world and the annoying theaters and the upright citizens. We're good. Yes, we're all playing in that in that wonderful pool. My contention is at Second City because we start with all the improv principles, but we do turn it into a very commercial product. That's the difference that we've got is

the sort of professionalization of it. The commercialization of it gives those performers an incredible boost because they can't just go do this stuff in front of their fifty friends who paid five bucks. They've got to do it in front of you know, Nancy from Naperville, who you know and and well. And what comes out of that then is that when you let go of your idea of what should be funny and you discover what is funny, you discuss through following the follow with from other members

of your ensemble, but also following the follower with the audience. Yeah, right, that you discussed, so that rather than and it also, I think maybe is the reason why improvisers are certainly marginally more mentally healthy than stand ups is that you're not forcing yourself to come up with the thing, discovering it in this moment with everybody else. That's very positive psychology as well. Yeah, all those findings of you, well,

what we know produces well being in life. So I want to end on this of what makes great comedy great comedy? I read one of the way well okay, well, I mean that's a whole other podcast discussion, so I'm going to table that. But and I was actually going to ask earlier if there are a lot of political themed things going on at Second City right these days? Completely. I mean, we've co created a show with Slate magazine, we have another political review that's out, we're writing a

new show right now. But you know, we always have to be careful when we're writing a show during an election because we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen, especially in this one, so we tend to look for the larger themes. So while everyone else is dealing with joke of the moment, that's never what's going to end up in the Second City show. It's going to be the broader thing of like, here's the thing that was really going on for the

last year. But one of you guys said that great comedy involves three things creativity, communication, and collaboration. Didn't one of you say that is the improvisation does? Yeah, so comedy has got more stuff. Comedy okay, so yeah, so that's great comedy. And then when you talk about so I think that improv, like as you guys talked throughout this whole interview today, it really combines those three things. Yes, absolutely, yeah. I mean, you know, improv and comedy are two different things,

and they are connected of course in our world. But what improv is a practice, and it is a there is a tetagogy. It's a well, it's a creativity practice. It is a communication practice that reveals truth that creates comedy. So improvisation often creates comedy, but improvisation by itself is not inherently comedic, but it creates comedy because it connects to those things that are true about comedy, authenticity, recognition,

and shared social world. Boom. I want to end right there. Okay, thank you guys so much for the work you do and for showing me so clearly how important improv it is. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barak Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought per booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com.